This update adds notes for all remaining lectures (up to and including lecture 23.) I’ve made a pass with a spellchecker to correct some of the aggregious spelling erorss, and also redrawn three figures, replacing photos, which cuts the size in half!

I’ve posted the redacted version (316 pages). The full version, with my problem set solutions (including errors) is 409 pages.

Feel free to contact me for the complete version (i.e. including my problem set solutions, with errors) of any of these notes, provided you are not asking because you are taking or planning to take this course.

We finished off with a quick discussion of quark pair production, and how some of the calculations we performed for muon pair production can be used to measure and validate the intermediate quark states that were theorized as carriers of the strong force.

This post is a synopsis of the material from the second last lecture of QFT I. I missed that class, but worked from notes kindly provided by Emily Tyhurst, and Stefan Divic, filling in enough details that it made sense to me.

The Hamiltonian action on single particle states showed that the Hamiltonian was an energy eigenoperator
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:qftLecture22:140}
H \ket{\Bp, r}
=
\omega_\Bp \ket{\Bp, r}.
\end{equation}

The conserved Noether current and charge for spatial translations, the momentum operator, was found to be
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:260}
\BP =
\int d^3 x
\Psi^\dagger (-i \spacegrad) \Psi,
\end{equation}
which could be written in creation and anhillation operator form as
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:261}
\BP = \sum_{s = 1}^2
\int \frac{d^3 q}{(2\pi)^3} \Bp \lr{
a_\Bp^{s\dagger}
a_\Bp^{s}
+
b_\Bp^{s\dagger}
b_\Bp^{s}
}.
\end{equation}
Single particle states were found to be the eigenvectors of this operator, with momentum eigenvalues
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:262}
\BP a_\Bq^{s\dagger} \ket{0} = \Bq (a_\Bq^{s\dagger} \ket{0}).
\end{equation}

The conserved Noether current and charge for a rotation was found. That charge is
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:qftLecture22:920}
\BJ = \int d^3 x \Psi^\dagger(x) \lr{ \underbrace{\Bx \cross (-i \spacegrad)}_{\text{orbital angular momentum}} + \inv{2} \underbrace{\mathbf{1} \otimes \Bsigma}_{\text{spin angular momentum}} } \Psi,
\end{equation}
where
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:qftLecture22:260}
\mathbf{1} \otimes \Bsigma =
\begin{bmatrix}
\Bsigma & 0 \\
0 & \Bsigma
\end{bmatrix},
\end{equation}
which has distinct orbital and spin angular momentum components. Unlike NRQM, we see both types of angular momentum as components of a single operator. It is argued in [3] that for a particle at rest the single particle state is an eigenvector of this operator, with eigenvalues \( \pm 1/2 \) — the Fermion spin eigenvalues!

It was also pointed out that we don’t tend to need the explicit form of these square roots.We saw that to be the case in all our calculations, where these always showed up in the end in quadratic combinations like \( \sqrt{ (p \cdot \sigma)^2 }, \sqrt{ (p \cdot \sigma)(p \cdot \overline{\sigma})}, \cdots \), which nicely reduced each time without requiring the matrix roots.

I encountered a case where it would have been nice to have the explicit representation. In particular, I wanted to use Mathematica to symbolically expand \( \overline{\Psi} i \gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \Psi \) in terms of \( a^s_\Bp, b^r_\Bp, \cdots \) representation, to verify that the massless Dirac Lagrangian are in fact the energy and momentum operators (and to compare to the explicit form of the momentum operator found in eq. 3.105 [1]). For that mechanical task, I needed explicit representations of all the \( u^s(p), v^r(p) \) matrices to plug in.

Also note that in class we made a note that we should take the positive roots of the eigenvalue diagonal matrix. It doesn’t look like that is really required. We need not even use the same sign for each root. Squaring the resulting matrix root in the end will recover the original \( p \cdot \sigma \) matrix.

We can now define an energy-momentum tensor
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:200}
T^{\mu\nu}
=
\overline{\Psi} i \gamma^\mu \partial^\nu \Psi
+ g^{\mu\nu} \LL.
\end{equation}
A couple things are of notable in this tensor. One is that it is not symmetric, and there’s doesn’t appear to be any hope
of making it so. For example, the space+time components are way different
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:220}
\begin{aligned}
T^{0k} &= \overline{\Psi} i \gamma^0 \partial^k \Psi \\
T^{k0} &= \overline{\Psi} i \gamma^k \partial^0 \Psi,
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
so if we want a momentum like creature, we have to use \( T^{0k} \), not \( T^{k0} \). The charge associated with that current is
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:240}
\begin{aligned}
Q^k
&=
\int d^3 x
\overline{\Psi} i \gamma^0 \partial^k \Psi \\
&=
\int d^3 x
\Psi^\dagger (-i \partial_k) \Psi,
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
or translating from component to vector form
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:260}
\BP =
\int d^3 x
\Psi^\dagger (-i \spacegrad) \Psi,
\end{equation}
which is the how the momentum operator is first stated in [2]. Here the vector notation doesn’t have any specific representation, but it is interesting to observe how this is directly related to the massless Dirac Lagrangian

\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:280}
\begin{aligned}
\LL(m = 0)
&=
\overline{\Psi} i \gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \Psi \\
&=
\Psi^\dagger i \gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \Psi \\
&=
\Psi^\dagger i (\partial_0 + \gamma_0 \gamma^k \partial_k) \Psi \\
&=
\Psi^\dagger i (\partial_0 – \gamma_0 \gamma_k \partial_k ) \Psi,
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
but since \( \gamma_0 \gamma_k \) is a \( 4 \times 4 \) representation of the Pauli matrix \( \sigma_k \) Lagrangian itself breaks down into
\begin{equation}\label{eqn:momentumDirac:300}
\LL(m = 0)
=
\Psi^\dagger i \partial_0 \Psi
+
\Bsigma \cdot \lr{ \Psi^\dagger (-i\spacegrad) \Psi },
\end{equation}
components, and lo and behold, out pops the momentum operator density! There is ambiguity as to what order of products \( \gamma_0 \gamma_k \), or \( \gamma_k \gamma_0 \) to pick to represent the Pauli basis ([1] uses \( \gamma_k \gamma_0 \)), but we also have sign ambiguity in assembling a Noether charge from the conserved current, so I don’t think that matters. Some part of this should be expected this since the Dirac equation in momentum space is just \( \gamma \cdot p – m = 0 \), so there is an intimate connection with the operator portion and momentum.

The last detail to fill in is going from \ref{eqn:momentumDirac:260} to \ref{eqn:momentumDirac:20} using the \( a, b\) representation of the field. That’s an algebraically messy looking job that I don’t feel like trying at the moment.

This version includes the following content. Fermion related content is new since the last upload, as well as some work to make the scattering content (lecture 17,18) somewhat sensible (it was in it’s raw post-class form before, which made little sense)